Hunger and Need

January 16, 2018

St. Berard & Companions, Protomartyrs

Mark 2:18-22

The law of the Sabbath was intended to give people a day of rest and a time worship God, our Creator and the ultimate source of all of our blessings. But it’s hard to rest if you’re hungry, and it can be difficult to turn your mind to God when it is overwhelmed with other human needs. Jesus, fully human and fully divine, understood this in a way that his religious critics could not.

For many families these days Sundays, the traditional Christian sabbath, are for more likely to be packed with activities—church (if they go), shopping, kids’ sports, house cleaning and projects, etc. Many actually have to go to work on Sundays, in part to serve those shopping, taking kids to their games and meets, cleaning and fixing up their houses. Different kinds of hunger and other forms of need, whether they are real or contrived by advertisers and our culture, can turn our attention toward ourselves as easily as toward God.

As human beings, we want to have our hungers satisfied and our needs fulfilled. As followers of Jesus, we also need to examine ourselves and consider where God is among those hungers and needs.—JC